Seaplane
by Joseph Laban
Summary: Alex's journey through Jumanji before and after meeting Spencer, Martha, Fridge and Bethany. A tribute to Nick Jonas.
1. Ninety-Six

**A tribute to my favourite character in Jumanji WTTJ:** **Seaplane McDonough. I still haven't gotten over how cool his Nick-name is.**

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16-year-old Alex Vreeke was awoken in the middle of the night by a green flash in his bedroom. He could have sworn that he heard drum beats coming from that box on his cabinet labelled 'Jumanji'.

He opened the box to find it empty save for a single video game cartridge. That was odd. He knew that there had been a board game there when he opened the box that afternoon.

Curiously, he plugged the cartridge into his console to see what it was about. After a brief opening message about wanting to leave one's world behind, a character select menu appeared on the screen.

Alex saw that there were five different playable characters to choose from. After thinking for a moment, he decided to select the one at the top of the screen: Jefferson "Seaplane" McDonough, pilot and rascal. That sounded cool and looked like it would suit him well.

"Welcome to Jumanji!" chirped the game's narrator. Alex pressed start, and immediately drum beats began to play loudly in his room. A green light on his console shone brightly, and slowly, bit by bit, Alex felt that he was being sucked into the game.

"What's happening?!" he cried, as he suddenly felt he was falling, crashing through branches and leaves. Then as soon as it had started, it was over.

Alex found himself in the midst of a thick jungle. Looking at himself, he realised that his outfit had changed into that of a pilot adventurer. He also saw that the name tag on his new leather jacket read "Seaplane". As he ran to the river to catch a glimpse of his reflection, he realised he was in another man's body - that of Seaplane McDonough.

He saw a hippo emerging from the water, and began running in the opposite direction. He had not run far before a man pulled up in front of him in a Jeep. The vehicle's door opened, and the driver introduced himself as Nigel Billingsley.

Alex got in, and Nigel began explaining the backstory of Jumanji to him. Nigel informed him that he, Seaplane, was here to assist "Dr. Bravestone and his associates" in their quest, and that he must be ready to help them when they arrived.

At the end of their ride, Nigel gave Alex the Jaguar's Eye and wished him Godspeed. He handed him a map of Jumanji, told him to go to the bazaar and gave him instructions on how to finish the game.

As Nigel drove away, Alex found himself on a vast open plain. Opening the map, he saw that it was blank. For a moment, he wondered if it was a glitch in the game, but he soon recalled that there was a cartographer in the game's character select menu. Alex cursed. He suspected that only the cartographer had the ability to read the map, which meant that he was lost.

He barely had time to appreciate the gorgeous scenery around him before the ominous Jumanji drums sounded again, and he had to flee from mercenaries on motorcycles. Fortunately, he was able to lose them by running into the jungle and jumping into a waterfall.

After emerging from the waterfall, Alex decided to move towards higher ground. As a trained pilot, he was able to navigate using the sun and the stars; but without a map, he spent several days wandering around the island before he finally found the bazaar.

At the bazaar, an NPC with the appearance of a young boy led him into a small rotunda, wherein was a basket containing his next clue. As soon as Alex entered the rotunda, the Jumanji drums sounded for the third time.

Opening the basket, Alex was freaked to see a snake emerge from it. He ran screaming out of the rotunda, knocking over the basket in the process, and ended up taking refuge atop one of the bazaar tables.

A nearby incense vendor explained to Alex that the snake was a black mamba, one of the deadliest creatures in existence. He also told him it was safe to go back into the rotunda - the snake was gone. Tentatively, Alex ventured back inside. He found his clue lying on the floor: a small elephant token wrapped with a note which read, 'When you see me, begin the climb.'

Unfortunately, he had been found by Van Pelt's patrolling pet vulture, and Van Pelt soon arrived at the bazaar with his minions. Seeing them, Alex turned tail and ran. He managed to delay his pursuers a little bit by overturning tables and causing a ruckus as he fled. Suddenly, Alex spotted a manhole in the ground, removed its covering and climbed down into it.

Unfortunately, the minions had seen him, and they followed him down into the sewer. Alex hid in the darkness, praying that they would leave. Suddenly, he heard loud, bloodcurdling screams coming from elsewhere in the maze of tunnels.

A minion passed by Alex's hiding place, and Alex quickly knocked him out, stealing his weapons and supplies. Moving on, Alex saw two dead mercenaries pinned to the end of a corridor by spears. After plundering them too, he took care to avoid the flying spears. Later, he found another corridor littered by the sliced-up bodies of more dead henchmen. After a few seconds of observation, Alex deduced that sharp blades would spring out of the walls along the white bricks on the floor, and he navigated through the trap with ease.

After passing by the blades, Alex encountered a watery pit of crocodiles. He fed a minion's corpse to the crocodiles, and found a wooden plank long enough to cross the pit with. Alex supposed that the video game always provided a way to solve its puzzles. Pressing on ahead, he found a door which opened to the jungle.

Trekking through the jungle, Alex was distracted by birdsong. Looking up, he saw an abandoned treehouse, which was now inhabited by birds. He thought it was a curiosity, but decided to move on.

He eventually saw a large shed in the distance, and supposed that was his next stop. Upon a closer look, he realised it was being guarded by two NPCs. Alex decided to wait until nightfall before sneaking towards the shed.

Under the cover of darkness, Alex crept past the guards and killed them with a single shot from his stolen pistol. With the guards taken care of, he broke into the shed.

Inside, Alex saw that the shed was filled with various vehicles, including motorcycles, cars, a bus, a plane and a helicopter. As it was dark outside, he chose to take a hot air balloon, hoping that the fire would provide him some light with which to see. He dragged it out of the shed and lit it up.

Suddenly, a strong gust of wind came, and the balloon caught fire. Panicking, Alex tried to turn the leaking gas supply off, but it was too late. The hot air balloon exploded in a brilliant conflagration.

To Alex's surprise, he respawned at daybreak, not too far away from the shed. Examining his wrist tattoo, he saw that it now consisted of only two bars where there once were three, and realised that he had two lives left with which to finish the game. He decided that he must make the canyon crossing in the daytime, and choose another vehicle with which to do so.

Alex tried to advance towards the shed, but the guards spotted him and began firing at him. He took off running and barely escaped with his life. He realised that he had no choice but to wait for the guards to leave.

In the meantime, Alex decided to return to the treehouse. He cleaned the place up and made himself comfortable there. He noticed Alan Parrish's name carved into a plank, and guessed that he must be the treehouse's builder.

Feeling hot and sweaty, Alex went to take a bath in a nearby river. While bathing, he accidentally tapped his left pec and summoned his orange character stats menu. He learned that his strengths were piloting and margarita-making, while his weaknesses were women and mosquitos.

Horrified, Alex quickly returned to the bazaar in order to buy some citronella candles for the treehouse. In a stroke of good fortune, the incense vendor allowed him to have them for free. Encouraged, Alex decided to celebrate, and purchased some groceries, a blender and an electric generator from the nearby stalls. Back at the treehouse, he made himself his first margarita and commended himself for his skill.

Three weeks later, Alex saw that the guards had finally left. Seizing his opportunity, he snuck into the shed and narrowed down his transportation choices to a plane and a helicopter. Because his name was Seaplane, he decided to go with the plane.

He took off successfully and flew away over the canyon in broad daylight, feeling optimistic. Suddenly, the Jumanji drums sounded again, and a couple of fighter jets piloted by orangutans appeared behind him.

Desperately, Alex tried to manoeuvre his aircraft, but the merciless orangutans shot his starboard wing off. He screamed as he spiralled out of control and crashed, the mocking hoots of the orangutans ringing in his ears.

Alex respawned near the shed once more. He saw that he had just one life bar left, and he was overcome by dread. For the first time, he realised just how immensely difficult the game really was, and he knew that he could not afford to make another fatal mistake.

In fear, Alex hurried back to the safety of his treehouse. Once there, he made himself a margarita to help him calm down.

While drinking, he took the Jaguar's Eye out of his pocket and looked at it. He remembered the other four characters mentioned by Nigel and the character select screen - Bravestone, Finbar, Oberon and Roundhouse. He wondered if he would feel better if he had been playing this game with friends, instead of by himself.

Alex suddenly understood that unless he could somehow complete the game by himself, he was stuck there forever, and the jewel would never be returned to its destination. With just one life remaining, it would take a miracle for him to be able to do it now.

He thought back to the night he started playing, and wished that someone had warned him about this game. He began to miss his home and his parents, and suddenly realised that he might never see them again.

At the thought of all this, Alex burst into tears. He was all alone, trapped in a strange land with no hope of rescue and no realistic chance of getting out alive. In his despair, he vainly tried to drown his sorrows in his margaritas.

Months passed by, and Alex resigned himself to his fate in Jumanji. One day, he woke up and went about his daily errands as usual. He opened the locked chest where he kept the Jaguar's Eye and his weapons, and took out his guns to go hunting.

After an hour, he returned with a small deer. However, when he went to return his weapons to the chest, he was shocked to see that the Jaguar's Eye had disappeared. For a brief moment, he panicked and wondered if some animal or even Van Pelt had stolen it.

He heard bikers roaring through the jungle below him, and hid himself so as not to be seen by them. He overheard their shouts, and was able to make out the words "Bravestone!" and "Find them!"

Alex thought about it for a moment, hope rising within him. _Bravestone?_ _Find them?_ Could more players possibly have joined the game? If so, the game must have sent the gem back to Nigel so that he could give it to them…

Excitedly, Alex rearmed himself and descended from his treehouse. If there were indeed new players in the game, he was sure he would run into them at the bazaar.

Alex donned a bandana mask and snuck back to the bazaar. When he arrived, he heard a commotion, and peeked around the corner to see what was going on.

He was amazed to see a strong hulking man punching Van Pelt's minions sky-high. Alex wondered if this man was a player, and how many others there were with him.

Suddenly, Van Pelt himself arrived at the bazaar and the fight came to an abrupt halt. From his vantage point, Alex was able to identify the new players for the first time because they were all standing together in a group: The hulk, a short black man with a backpack, a really fly redhead in a crop top and shorts, and a fat bearded man in a pith helmet.

 _No way!_ thought Alex. _Could that really be_ all _of them?_

 _Yeah!_ he realised a moment later. It was _totally_ the remaining quartet from the character select screen! Somehow, they had all joined him in the game at last.

The four newcomers were standing there in fear, unsure of what to do. Alex heard Van Pelt address the hulk as Dr. Bravestone, and he suddenly realised why Nigel always spoke of Bravestone as if he were the main character - because he was.

"We just want to go home," Dr. Bravestone said, in an uncharacteristically timid tone for a man his size. Van Pelt's minions cocked their guns to fire, and Alex realised he needed to act _now_.

Alex took out a smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it into the midst of his newfound companions. His solitary existence in the game was over.

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	2. Helicopter

**The helicopter scene from Alex's perspective.**

Alex was conflicted. He was in the Transportation Shed once again, this time with his new friends Spencer, Fridge, Martha and Bethany (who was stuck in a man's body despite being a gir - correction, _woman_ ).

Even though he had already told them that he _wasn't_ a good pilot, the four newcomers seemed to be eagerly expecting him to know which vehicle to take; and worse still, to actually _fly_ them to the Jaguar Statue!

Martha bounded into the room, full of excitement after having single-handedly defeated the NPC guards. The others rushed to congratulate her. Good for her, and good for them, Alex thought. Every one of them still had two lives apiece, and he wished he still had that luxury and their confidence, to boot.

However, Fridge did not seem as joyous as the others. Apparently, he had spotted the "motorcycle freaks" coming for them, and was telling everyone that they needed to leave right away. Alex knew what was coming next, and he wished he were anywhere else at that moment.

"Seaplane!" Fridge called him, pointing to the helicopter. "We need to fly, man!"

"Nope!" Alex replied dismissively. "I can't do it. I _told_ you, I'm not a good pilot!" He looked about anxiously, and spotted another large vehicle nearby. "Maybe we should take the school bus!" he said, gesturing to it. Alex knew he was grasping at straws, but the last thing he wanted to do was to fly an aircraft again.

"But, we can't outrun those motorcycles with a d*mn bus!" cried Fridge indignantly.

"You picked the plane and the hot air balloon," Bethany interjected. "Maybe you were supposed to pick the helicopter!"

"No, I can't do it, okay?" Alex insisted. " _I don't wanna die!_ "

There was a brief silence from the four newbies. They almost couldn't believe such lack of courage and confidence from their rescuer.

"I'm freaking out, a little bit," Alex fibbed. In reality, he was absolutely terrified.

"Fine!" barked Fridge drunkenly. " _I'll_ do it. How hard could it be, it's a helicopter!" He then proceeded to give an overly-simplistic and totally inaccurate description of how to fly a helicopter; and Alex, having Seaplane's knowledge of flight, was fully aware of this. However, even the need to save the team from being killed by Fridge's horrendous piloting wasn't enough to coax the old aviator out of retirement.

"Alex," said Martha finally, "if _I_ can fight those guys, _you_ can fly this helicopter, I _know_ you can. Come _on_!" Alex paused to look at her. She reminded him so much of his old gym teacher, who always used to encourage him in sports when he didn't feel like it.

"Alex," she said again, more persuasive this time; " _this is where we need you._ "

"Remember, _you're_ the missing piece," Bethany chimed in.

Alex looked at them for a long while, their words sinking in. This really was about _them_ , he thought, not about him. He had been wrong. Up to this moment, he had been so self-absorbed, so concerned about his own safety that he had failed to take the needs of the other players into account. He had been playing Jumanji for _twenty years_ , he now knew; but during all that time, he had never needed to look out for anyone but himself.

But he was no longer alone. Providence had sent him four new teammates, and he was a part of _their_ team, rather than them being part of his. Which meant that it was his duty to put the needs and interests of the Team, _first_. And right now, the Team's greatest need was for a _pilot_ to get behind the controls of a _helicopter_ and fly them all to safety!

Slowly, Alex nodded in agreement, and broke into a smile for the first time in a quarter hour. "Seaplane McDonough, reporting for duty," he said, putting on a pair of cool shades. " _Let's go, people!_ "

His four teammates cheered, and all the players trooped into the waiting helicopter together.

Alex climbed into the helicopter's cockpit, while the others filled the passengers' seats. Tapping into Seaplane's flight expertise, he skilfully ran a blitz pre-flight check and started up the engine. The shed rumbled and shook from the draft of the aircraft's whirling rotor blades.

Alex pushed the stick forward, and the helicopter burst out of the shed into the open air. Gunfire and rockets from the motorcycle mercenaries whizzed past them, but Alex did not care. He _had_ to get his teammates safely to the other side of the canyon; he just _had_ to!

Suddenly, he heard a clang somewhere above him, and the helicopter controls jammed in his hands. The aircraft began to lose altitude, and Alex started to worry. He took off his sunglasses and quickly tried to figure out what had happened.

"What's wrong?" Bethany asked him with concern.

"Something's broken!" he cried.

"What!" shouted Spencer.

"What do you mean?" cried Martha with horror.

" _Hang on!_ " Alex told them, as the helicopter blades began to chew up the foliage around them. They were in serious trouble. _Again_.

The rotors made contact with a tall coconut tree, and the helicopter started spiraling out of control into the canyon. The passengers screamed. "Oh my God, we're about to die, we're about to _DIEEE_!" Fridge yelled in terror.

Alex barely heard any of it. He was strangely calm and in "the zone". All he could hear in his head was dialogue from the 1995 film 'Toy Story':

" _Buzz! This is the part where we blow up!"_

" _ **Not today**_ _!"_

Purely on instinct, hardly thinking, Alex pulled and wrestled with the controls. _Pull up_ , he said inwardly as he willed the aircraft to rise, _pull up!_

Almost obediently, the helicopter began to stabilise and come out of its spin. Sure, they were still losing height rapidly, but at least they were roughly flying forwards again. Alex gave the controls a final mighty pull, and thankfully, the aircraft leveled out at a few feet above the bottom of the canyon.

"Oh my God!" Martha wailed in fear.

"It won't go up!" cried Alex desperately.

"What do you mean?" asked Martha frantically.

"The collective is busted!" Alex told them.

"What?" called Spencer.

"It controls a plate up there, which tilts the rotors and controls the pitch. It's how we go up and down," Alex explained quickly, drawing from Seaplane's comprehensive knowledge of aircraft.

Helplessly, the helicopter kept on flying a few feet above the canyon floor, unable to climb to a higher altitude. Suddenly, the dreaded Jumanji drums sounded again.

"Guys?" asked Bethany worriedly.

"That can't be good!" Martha declared.

"There's no way that's good news!" Fridge agreed.

The five heard loud thundering noises behind them, and Fridge was struck with horror when he saw what was causing it. "Albino rhinos!" he shouted. "They're indigenous to Jumanji. They're huge, white, scary and stupid and they eat people!"

"No!" Bethany moaned in despair.

At another time, the other four would have been amazed to listen to Fridge spout useful facts about jungle animals. But in a hairy situation like this, such information did little to comfort them.

Desperately, Alex tried his best to manoeuvre the helicopter around the tight bends of the canyon. He was so busy trying to make sure they did not crash, that he had little time to listen to what his passengers were saying.

"My stomach is starting to bother me a little bit," said Fridge drunkenly. "I think I had too many margaritas."

"Go up!" Martha cried. "I _can't_ go up!" said Alex again.

"You guys, what are we gonna do?" asked Bethany fearfully.

"I'm gonna fix the helicopter!" said Spencer at last, with resolve in his voice.

" _Yes!_ " Bethany rejoiced.

"Tell me what to do!" he told Alex.

"Okay," Alex replied. "You've gotta connect the flight control rod to the swashplate under the rotors!" he instructed.

"Flight control rod - swashplate - under the rotors," Spencer repeated to himself. "I'll be right back!" he told the others.

"What?" Martha asked in confused horror. "Spencer, where are you _going_?!" she cried as she watched Spencer climb out onto the side of the helicopter.

"Hurry up!" Fridge urged him.

"Be careful!" Martha pleaded anxiously.

"No, no!" contradicted Fridge. "Just hurry up!"

Alex tried to keep the helicopter flying on a straight and level path. This was by far the most intense situation he had ever been in, and it seemed to become more challenging with every passing minute. He tried not to think about the fact that he was on his last life, or that failure here would result in the deaths of not just himself, but of his teammates as well. Every fibre of his being was focused on keeping the helicopter in the air for another second more.

Meanwhile, Spencer was outside the aircraft, trying to fix the damage and help them ascend. Alex prayed that the Doctor would be able to restore the helicopter's flight capabilities quickly, for he was not sure how much longer he could keep the fancy flying up.

Suddenly, the helicopter jerked to the side. The rhinos had caught up to them! Alex struggled to keep the aircraft steady. He heard Fridge and Martha screaming behind him, and he increased their flight speed by a tiny fraction in an effort to outrun the rhinos.

The tactic seemed to work for a few seconds, but then a new problem literally appeared in front of them: A wall of rock lay a few hundred yards directly ahead, making the canyon a dead end.

" _Spencer!_ " called Martha, desperately trying to alert him to the danger. "Hurry! Come on, _fix it!_ "

With the dead end approaching fast, Alex had no choice but to slow the helicopter down in order to buy Spencer more time. This left the aircraft's tail at the mercy of the stampeding rhinos behind them, and the vicious beasts did not hesitate to butt the helicopter with their horns.

This was a crisis. Alex's piloting skills were being tested to their very limits, and he was close to the breaking point. The aircraft was being battered repeatedly from behind, a wall of doom up ahead was coming closer and closer towards them, his passengers were screaming in terror, and Spencer _still_ hadn't fixed the damage to the helicopter!

This was it. It was now or never. They needed to pull up _now_ or they would crash into the wall in a matter of seconds. " _We're running out of time here, Spencer!_ " Alex cried out to his teammate frantically.

His prayer was answered. There was a * _click*_ below the rotors, and Alex heard Spencer's voice call out, " _Got it!_ " Without wasting a second, Alex pulled up on the controls, and miraculously, the helicopter responded perfectly this time. Before anyone knew it, they were going up, up, _up_ and _away_ from the rhinos, the canyon and that dreadful place.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They were okay!

"We made it!" Bethany exclaimed joyfully. "You did it!" she said to Spencer. "I thought we were gonna die. _Yes!_ " she whooped.

" _Nice!_ " called Alex, with the biggest smile he had had in years.

"Thank you," gasped Spencer, as relieved as everyone else to be alive.

"That was scary!" laughed Martha.

"Whoops," said Fridge.

Everyone turned to the zoologist. "What?" asked Spencer.

"I dropped the jewel," Fridge admitted sheepishly.

" _WHAT?!_ " cried Alex, Spencer, Bethany and Martha in unison.

"You dropped the jewel?!" Bethany screamed.

"I leaned over, thought I had to puke and I didn't, and it came out of my backpack," Fridge explained.

Martha facepalmed. Spencer and Alex groaned. " _We need the freaking jewel!_ " Bethany shouted.

"I know," said Fridge lamely. "That's, that's, that's the crazy part and I know we need it, so now we're in a pickle, we're in a pickle."

"Alex, turn around; we gotta go back and get it," sighed Spencer.

"Yeah, let's just loop around," said Fridge. "Just look for it, guys! Everybody open your eyes. Let's all just look for it as a group."

Reluctantly, Alex turned the helicopter around and headed back down into the canyon. Everyone kept their eyes peeled for any sign of the green gem.

Bethany was the first to spot it. In reality, it wasn't that difficult to do, as the rhinos were all circumambulating the Eye as if it was a holy object. "What are they doing?" Martha asked.

"It's like they're protecting it, or something," Spencer remarked. Retrieving the gem from the midst of the rhinos would not be an easy task.

"Alright, how are we gonna do this?" asked Alex, as he lowered the helicopter to give everyone a closer look.

"I don't know," Spencer replied, a look of concern creasing his brow.

"We've gotta go get it, right, buddy?" Fridge asked him, with some chutzpah. "What do you need? Do you need your boomerang? Maybe...maybe some scissors? A pipe wrench? Some shoelaces? I'm your valet. Whatever you need, I can get it for you, okay? You just say you want it."

Spencer was giving Fridge a funny look. "What?" asked Fridge in puzzlement.

"I'm sorry, buddy!" said Spencer regretfully. "Sorry for what?" asked Fridge.

He didn't have time to say another word before Spencer hurled him out of the helicopter. Bethany gasped. But Alex understood; Spencer was using Fridge as bait in order to draw the rhinos' attention away from the jewel.

Sure enough, the rhinos soon abandoned the jewel and went stampeding after the poor zoologist. Alex flew over them to where the Eye was, and dropped Spencer off to collect it safely. Having retrieved the McGuffin, Spencer threw it to Martha and climbed back into the helicopter.

"Turn us around!" Spencer ordered, and Alex obliged. He flew the helicopter down the canyon in the same direction that the rhinos were travelling in. Of course, Fridge had been trampled to death by the beasts already, so Alex was wondering how exactly they were going to pick him up as he respawned.

Suddenly, Spencer said, "Alex, get ready to roll us to the side!"

"What?!" Alex asked. That was an odd move to make while flying in a helicopter. Just then, the chime of Fridge respawning sounded overhead, and Alex understood. They wouldn't need to land after all.

"When I tell you, roll 90 degrees to the right!" Spencer instructed. There was a brief pause, and then Spencer shouted, " _Now!_ "

Alex rolled the helicopter onto its side, and Fridge fell straight down through its open left door. Spencer caught him on his way out, and the zoologist was left dangling by Spencer's arm out the helicopter's open right door.

"You pushed me out of the helicopter, jack*ss!" Fridge shouted angrily.

Nobody else was mad. They were all just too happy to have the jewel, a fully-functioning helicopter, and an open sky leading to freedom. Spencer returned Fridge to his seat, and Alex was free to pilot the aircraft leisurely at last.

Glancing out of the helicopter's side window, Alex suddenly spotted a particular feature of the aircraft that he hadn't noticed before. Recalling what had just happened to Fridge, as well as his special 'backpack power', Alex realised something that made him facepalm.

 _Why didn't we just shoot the rhinos?_


	3. Bethany

**Bethany saves Alex's life.**

Alex landed the helicopter in a clearing atop a small hill as its fuel supply reached zero. He couldn't believe it - he had actually passed the canyon level at last.

Behind him, Spencer, Martha and Bethany were whooping with joy at their success. The girls were fawning over Spencer and his incredible feat of fixing the helicopter in flight.

"Aw, thank you," said Spencer modestly, "but _he_ was amazing," he insisted, pointing at Alex. "Our pilot - you _killed_ it!" he declared.

Alex was having none of it. After all, he was only a pilot, but Spencer was the action hero. He joined the girls in showering praise upon the man-mountain.

Their game of praise ping-pong was suddenly interrupted by Fridge. "Excuse me?" exclaimed the tiny man indignantly. " _Excuse_ me! _I'm_ the one who was a human sacrifice!"

The zoologist blabbered on about how it had felt like to be trampled by rhinos, but Alex wasn't paying attention. He was just too happy to finally see the other side of that confounded canyon.

He removed his leather jacket to celebrate, and took a moment to appreciate the lush scenery all around him. It was a sight he had never expected to see in two decades.

He turned towards his four new friends. He would never have made it here without them, and he wanted them to know how much it meant to him.

"Guys, I've been trying to get across this canyon for like, twenty years," he cried. "Do you realise how huge this is?"

Just then, Alex heard a familiar buzzing noise around his neck, and instinctively slapped it against his nape. It took him a second to process what had happened, but then it became terrifyingly clear.

"Mosquito!" he gasped in horror. He didn't have time to say another word before his world went black.

The next thing he knew, he was awake and gasping for air. He opened his eyes to see bright sunshine above him, blue sky, and Martha.

Wait, _Martha_? Alex's confused mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He got bitten by a mosquito, which meant that he was dead. If he was dead, this must be the afterlife. But if this was the afterlife, why was _Martha_ , of all people, here with him? Shouldn't she be back in Jumanji with the others?

Alex tried to sit up, and realised that Martha was not alone. He glimpsed Spencer and Fridge standing nearby, and realised that this was no afterlife - he was still in Jumanji. He was still alive and playing in Jumanji. How?

"What happened?" he asked Martha in bewilderment.

"Alex," Martha told him breathlessly, "Bethany gave you one of her lives."

Alex couldn't believe his ears. With Martha's help, he picked himself up off the ground, and turned around to see Bethany lying beside him, exhausted.

"Bethany, are you okay?" he heard Spencer ask her. "I think so," she replied.

"Bethany, is that true?" he asked her in amazement, helping her off the ground as well. "You gave me one of your lives?"

Bethany gave a dismissive shake of her head, telling him not to bother about it. "I mean, yeah, of course," she replied with a silly smile.

" _Thank you!_ " Alex exclaimed, wrapping his arms around her. She had literally brought him back from the dead, sacrificing one of her lives to do so. He did not know how he could thank her enough.

In that moment, a childhood memory from Sunday School came back to Alex. In it, his teacher was telling the class the story of Jesus Christ raising Lazarus from the dead. He suddenly remembered the name of the location where the story took place - the village of _Bethany_.

Alex laughed. He supposed that Bethany was truly well-named, and that her heroic action had just made him Lazarus. He had never expected to see the light of life again, but this brave girl had given him another chance to continue playing. He vowed to find a way to repay her someday.

How many lives did each of them have now? Bethany now had one since she donated her second life to him, Fridge had one after being sacrificed to the rhinos, while Spencer and Martha both had two each. Which meant that three of them now had to be extra careful and not lose any more lives if they wanted to get out of the game alive.

Still, Alex had hope. After all, he had managed to pilot the helicopter safely through gunfire and the canyon (twice!) with just one life remaining. But he hadn't done it alone. They had managed to pull through because Spencer had been present to fix the helicopter. Alex realised that if he had attempted the chopper flight alone, it would likely have resulted in failure for him once more.

 _Together_ , he told himself. Only together did they stand any chance of beating the game. His mistake had been to try and go it alone, and he had lost two lives in the canyon as a result.

But things were different now - he now had four real friends in the game with him, and they needed his help as much as he needed theirs. He supposed that with the right amount of skill and luck, there was a good chance that all of them could actually win and go home together.

Alex joined the others as they all trekked towards the river to find drinking water. It would be a while before they found the next stage of their mission, and he was determined to enjoy the break while it lasted.


	4. Ninety-Six: Part II

**Alex returns home.**

Alex came to himself in the midst of darkness. It took him a moment to realise that he was back in his own bedroom, in the real world. He looked down, and saw that he was dressed in the same pyjamas he had worn when he left.

How long had he been gone? Spencer, Fridge and Bethany had told him that he had disappeared from his home for twenty years. But if two decades had gone by, why did his room look exactly like how it did in 1996 – posters, decorations and all? Did his parents care about him _that_ much?

Anxiously, Alex hurried downstairs to check the calendar hanging in the living room. To his surprise, it showed the date of his disappearance: December 15, 1996. No time at all had passed since he got sucked into the game! He was home – back in his own place, and in his own time.

Alex gave a silent whoop of joy as he tiptoed back to his room and climbed gratefully back into bed. He had been wondering how he would explain his long disappearance to his parents, but now he didn't have to worry about that. Instead, the whole incident could simply be swept under the rug.

Alex paused. No, he did _not_ want to sweep Jumanji under the rug! How could he? Two decades living alone in a jungle, going on the adventure of a lifetime? The things he'd experienced, the friends he'd made – was he simply to forget them?

Most of all, was he to forget _Bethany_? The girl from the future who had sacrificed a life for him? He wouldn't even _be_ here if it wasn't for her! _Every day_ he would live from now on was a gift from her, and Alex knew he would be an idiot not to honour her memory always.

The thought of Bethany suddenly made Alex realise something else. His new friends had come from _twenty_ _years_ in the future – _his_ future. Even though he had been laughing and joking with them only a few minutes earlier (according to his reckoning), he now saw that he would need to wait two whole decades to meet them again. Worse still, even though his house was familiar to Spencer, Fridge, Martha and Bethany, he had no idea what they looked like in real life, and he doubted if they knew what he really looked like either. How would he recognize them twenty years from now?

Alex groaned. If he knew it was going to be like this, he wouldn't have shaken hands with Nigel so quickly. Instead, he would have exchanged a few more words with Bethany, asked the others where they lived, what their phone numbers were… Alex shook his head thinking of all the missed opportunities.

Eventually, he realized that he needed to preserve everything he remembered about Jumanji and his new friends before the details faded from his memory. He leapt out of bed, pulled out his notebook, turned on his desk lamp and began scribbling furiously. Spencer Gilpin. Fridge, the football player. Martha, the bad*ss girl. _Bethany_ , supposedly a looker in real life. What would a 'phone' be twenty years from now? The names, appearances, strengths and weaknesses of their avatars. The levels they'd gone through and the various ways they'd lost their lives. Van Pelt and Nigel Billingsley. Alan Parrish and his lifesaving treehouse.

When it was all written down, Alex slumped back in his chair, exhausted. What else was he supposed to do now? he thought. His eyes wandered to his television set and his gaming console, with the Jumanji cartridge still plugged into it. _Of course!_ he realised angrily. He needed to _destroy_ the game so that no one could ever play it again!

Alex yanked the cartridge out of its socket. He was about to snap it in two and hurl the cursed thing into the trash, until he remembered the time-travel movies he had watched as a kid. In _Back to the Future_ , Marty McFly's actions in the past significantly changed his life in the present. _Terminator 2_ explored what might happen if people tried to alter future history by destroying something important today. And most pertinently, the protagonists in _The Final Countdown_ actually allowed the attack on Pearl Harbour to take place in order to return to their own time.

Could that be what he was meant to do? Alex wondered. His return to 1996 was, in a way, dependent upon Spencer and Co. joining the game in 2016. If he destroyed the game now, they would never find it and play it, thus potentially undoing the whole time loop.

Alex massaged his temples. Time-travel questions like these were enough to give him a headache, even more so in the middle of the night. He never dreamed that all this would happen as a result of his dad finding a stupid board game on the beach during one of his early morning jogs. Come to think of it, why was the game on the beach in the first place? Could a previous player have tried to dispose of it in the sea, only for it to be washed ashore later? Alex remembered Alan Parrish, the mysterious builder of his treehouse. Could _he_ have been the one who did it? Perhaps he was a passenger on a cruise ship, or something.

Gradually, Alex began to see a way out. Supposing Alan had dumped the game into the sea to get rid of it, he had failed miserably. Somehow, the game had escaped destruction and managed to ensnare Alex, Spencer and their friends. If, however, Alex kept the game to himself, then perhaps he could have more control over it and actually prevent others from playing it.

Realising this, Alex gently placed the Jumanji cartridge back into the board game case where it had first materialized. He would guard this rectangular box and its contents carefully over the next twenty years. When the time was right, he would donate the console and cartridge to Brantford High School, where he knew four teenagers would be serving detention come 2016.

Alex looked out of his bedroom window and saw the first streaks of dawn begin to light the sky. It was a new day for him, in more ways than one. As he crawled back under the covers to catch up on lost sleep, he thought once more about Bethany. Man, did this remind him of that 1988 Tom Hanks movie called _Big_ …


	5. Christmas

**The epilogue from Alex's perspective.**

It was ten days before Christmas, 2017.

37-year-old Alex Vreeke and his family drove up to Alex's childhood home, with a massive Christmas tree fastened atop their vehicle.

Once they arrived, little Bethany Vreeke bounded out of the car and ran up the house steps to embrace her dear old grandpa.

As the rest of his family opened the car doors and got out, Alex put on a jacket and gently took his infant son Andy out of the car. "Dad, when you get a sec, would you give us a hand?" he called out to his old man. "Yeah!" Old Man Vreeke replied, as he went to help untie the large tree from the roof of his son's vehicle.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex spied four teenagers standing nearby, staring at him open-mouthed.

For a brief moment, Alex wondered who they were, but all of a sudden, it clicked, and he remembered. Jumanji. The jungle.

Memories from long ago came flooding back to him. Could it _really_ be them? he wondered. He had not been expecting this when he got up that morning. His four friends from the game - were they really here, _now_?

Alex quickly did some math in his head. _1996...twenty years...2016...2017_... it's _them_! They're _here_! They're finally _here_! he thought in shock. Twenty years had flown by in the blink of an eye, and now his life with Spencer, Fridge, Martha and Bethany had come full circle.

"Hey, Dad, would you give me a second?" he asked his father, and the old man gave him leave.

Slowly, Alex walked up to the foursome, hardly daring to believe they were real. He could see them clearly for the first time. There was a scrawny Jewish kid in a yellow raincoat, a tall African-American hulk in a football jersey, a _fly_ blonde chick, and a shy redhead in a pink beanie. They all looked like they had just come home from school. Alex mentally tried to match these kids he was seeing with the characters he remembered from the game.

Which one was Bethany? Almost as if in response, the blonde girl waved timidly at him. Alex paused, a little afraid of making a mistake. He pointed to the girl who had waved at him, and ventured: "Bethany?"

The girl beamed at him, and Alex knew he had hit the jackpot. His excitement growing, he turned to the Jewish kid. "Spencer?" he asked, drawing a smile from the boy as well. Next, he looked at the red-headed girl, and marvelled at how much she resembled her character in the game. "Ruby Roundhouse?" he asked with a wry tilt of his brow, prompting her to blush. At last, he turned to the black giant among them. "And that would make you Fridge," Alex finished. Fridge lifted his hands with a smile, as if to say, " _Bingo!_ " and "What's up?"

Alex silently congratulated himself for his memory skills, and tried to find the right words to say. "I'm stoked to see you," he choked out. " _All_ of you."

Bethany seemed as choked up as he was. "You made it back," she finally told him.

"Yeah, I did," Alex replied. "It spit me out right where I started, so...1996." There was a rueful tone in his voice. It was easy to forget, while they were all in the game together, that he was 20 years older than the rest of them. But now, that age gap was apparent to all, and was making their reunion bittersweet.

"And your parents..., and... your house?" Spencer enquired quizzically. Alex suddenly remembered that while in the game, Spencer and Fridge had told him that his dad had grown miserable and his house had become derelict in the timeline where he didn't come back.

"Oh, yeah, I did," he told Spencer reassuringly, pointing to the house, which was now pristine and decked with Christmas decorations. "All good, bro." Upon hearing this, Spencer gave a smile of relief.

Bethany spoke next. "You're an adult now," she said, her voice cracking. "You have a... family."

Alex did not miss the disappointment in her voice, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. They had both developed feelings for one another while they were in the game, but time had separated them between two decades. He needed to tell her what he had done for her.

"I do, yeah," he told the four quickly. He gestured to the infant he was holding. "This is Andy, and..."

He saw Fridge give Andy a wave, and he continued. "And then my daughter... my daughter's name is... _Bethany_."

Alex wished he could remember the look on Bethany's face forever. "We named her after the girl who saved my life," he finished.

Bethany seemed unsure of whether to smile, drop her jaw, laugh or cry. All she could do was grin from ear to ear and shake her head in wonder. Alex doubted if he had ever seen another human being look as overjoyed as she did right now.

Alex was feeling pretty over the moon himself. For the first time, he realised that his four friends had probably just emerged from the game, and were heading home.

So it was over, he thought to himself. This must mean that their game of Jumanji was at last well and truly over. He marvelled at how a single game had bridged a night in 1996 with this afternoon in 2017, and how it had brought together two generations of kids - kids who would likely not have found each other otherwise.

Alex chuckled to think about all they had gained by playing the game. He would not exchange this one moment with his old (or was it new?) friends for the opportunity to avoid the terror and torment of the jungle altogether. For the first time, he was truly grateful that his dad had found the board game on the beach.

" _So stoked_ ," he told them again.

THE END?


End file.
